March IPA Madness at Latona Pub – Fill out your bracket now

UPDATE 3/8: Bracket entries are now closed. The winner from round one of the IPA Bracket is Boundary Bay, whose keg blew around 7:30 last night.

Finally, a March Madness I can get into. Latona Pub in east Green Lake has announced the beer contenders for their IPA Final Four Bracket contest. Brackets are available to be picked up at the pub, and must be returned before happy hour next Wednesday, March 7th.

Here’s how it works: Beginning March 5th, three IPAs at a time will be put on tap and the first keg to blow advances to the next level. The other first round pourings will happen on March 9th, March 12th, and March 16th. On your bracket form, you predict which of the three kegs will win for each occurrence – and remember, it could take a couple of days for a winner to be determined. The four winners from those preliminary rounds will go back on tap for the Final Four on March 23rd. If you’re lucky enough to have guessed correctly on at least a few of the first round drinks, the last round asks you to rate in which order the Final Four winners from the previous round will blow their casks.

Washington beers have some mighty strong competition this year against a few out-of-state contenders like Ninkasi Total Domination and Stone IPA. I’m not revealing my vote just yet, but I will tell you it’s a Seattle area brewery.